A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Wandering, Escaping, Arriving

Travel can be a luxury, a diversion, an obsession, a necessity, or a means of survival. In Sybil Baker’s Immigration Essays, it’s all those things, as well as a kind of meditation on how to be in the world. Baker will discuss Immigration Essays at Starline Books in Chattanooga on February 15 at 7 p.m.

American Letters

In Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution, Nashville writer Daniel L. Mallock details the breakup and later renewal of the friendship between two beloved founders. Mallock will sign Agony and Eloquence at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Cool Springs on February 11 at 1 p.m. and at Books-A-Million in Nashville on March 26 at 3 p.m.

Memory, Outrage, and Courage

In The Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy B. Tyson retells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy’s brutal murder in Mississippi, how it inspired a movement, and why his life and death still resonate today.

All Fluff, Movement, and Joy

Robert J. Blake will visit Parnassus Books on February 4 to read and sign Victor and Hugo. His newest picture book celebrates a canine friendship and the sights, sounds, and music of Paris.

A Park is Born

In 1925 a young man from Knoxville named Paul Adams established the first permanent camp atop Mt. Le Conte, the highest peak in what would become Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Editors Ken Wise and Anne Bridges have now updated Adams’s memoir, Mount Le Conte, first published fifty years ago, as a follow-up to Smoky Jack, which was published posthumously last year.

Finding Holmes

With The Story of Charlotte’s Web and The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, Michael Sims invented what amounts to a new genre: the biography of a particular book. In Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, he follows literary and historical clues to identify the origins of the most famous fictional detective in the world.

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